Customer loyalty marketing is easily one of the most efficient and cost-effective strategies.

It’s efficient because it allows you to target a segment you already have sufficient knowledge about: your existing customers. Since you’ve already monitored their motivations, pain points, buying behavior and purchase history, you can fine-tune your approach by backing it against empirical data.

It also allows you to retain customers, which is the holy grail of customer-centric marketing. Loyal customers have not only a higher lifetime value, but also greater average spending per purchase. Plus, it’s far cheaper to retain customers than acquire new ones.

Strong customer loyalty marketing enables you to target quality customers with high precision, increase your average order size/order amount and boost your bottom line. And that’s not even the best part!

What’s wonderful is that loyalty breeds loyalty! Loyal customers go out to spread the word about you, bringing in other like-minded prospects and turning them into referred customers for your business.

Here are five facts about customer loyalty you may not have known:

1. Customer Loyalty Marketing Is Driving Revenue for You

The great philosopher and economist Vilfredo Pareto discovered that income is distributed in what we now know as the Pareto distribution. Guess what? Your revenue is distributed similarly. Fitting into the Pareto principle, 80% of your revenue is generated by the 20% of your loyal customers. Customer loyalty and subsequent retention have in fact, been cited by 70% of service businesses as a critical factor of business growth.

2. Customer Loyalty Programs Can Turn the Apathetic Into the Loyal

Loyalty is a complex function of product and brand experience. But you probably already know that. However, do you know that a loyalty program can create loyalty for your brand? According to Accenture research, loyalty program members generate 12-18% more revenue per year than non-members. To see that number in motion, look no further than Amazon. Prime loyalty is so strong that Amazon was able to create a special member event that has exploded into a major ecommerce holiday.

3. Content Is King, Even in Customer Loyalty Marketing

A Bond Brand Loyalty survey found that relevant brand communication in customer loyalty marketing boosts satisfaction significantly. Loyalty program members who found communications to be relevant were 4.6 times more happy and satisfied with the brand than those who found the communication otherwise.

4. Go Mobile or Go Home

For many loyalty members, mobile is the preferred method of communication. Bond Brand Loyalty also found that 59% of consumers said that dedicated apps made them “much more likely” or “very likely” to become a member. 

5. Perks Matter; Social Rewards, Not so Much

More than half of loyalty members ultimately join to save money, which extends to their attitude toward rewards. Perks such as events, status and experiences are desired, though they’re secondary to monetary rewards.

 

Tracy McAllister is a marketing strategist and owner of McAllister Marketing.